End of an Era, End of a lip balm
by Nicole McManus
Whether the friendship is merely two people from childhood forced together via that strange sense of obligation, or more recent friends navigating a change of vibe in the friendship, it’s always awkward, always awful and, God, it hurts.
My best friend (I still call her that even when I know I shouldn’t) and I are going through this separation right now. It feels like how I imagine being divorced feels, strange and lonely and a bit weirdly desperate. People are always talking online about how hard it is to make friends as adults anyway, now I’m stuck with the dwindling numbers of my friendships and it gets hard not to cling.
The last time I saw her, someone we’ll call Sabrina, she and I hadn’t seen each other in months. We rarely physically saw each other anyway with our busy lives and possibly busier mental health crises, so when we did see each other it was a slew of birthday and Christmas gifts, our holiday mementos and handwritten cards. She gave me a bar of handmade soap she got from some fancy market she’d been to and, amongst other things, a big pot of Rituals’ Rescue Lip Balm, because this is apparently what adult women buy for each other.
The lip balm was such a big pot that I assumed I’d never be able to finish it, even with my always drier than dry lips (perhaps this gift should have been taken as more of a slight than I took it at the time). I don’t think I’ve ever finished a lip balm all the way to the end before. Usually I’d lose it in some pocket or bag and use another until I found it again and then so on and so forth, never finishing anything, never scraping my fingers on the cold glass of the bottom of the pot or the scratch of the plastic against my lips as I try to eek out the end of the bullet.
But, I finished my lip balm and I haven’t spoken to Sabrina since February. If I get a new one, that’s admitting defeat, she’s obviously not my supplier of these things but it’s sort of become symbolic of our friendship. I text her so often, well, I used to, and she hardly ever replies. She hasn’t replied at all for three months at the time of writing and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. It hurts to see her little picture pop up as being online on Instagram or to see she’s posted a story of yet another dinner somewhere. I wonder where she is or what she’s doing, what she thinks of things both worldwide and amongst our mutual friends and I feel like I’m missing my right arm. I feel like I’m pathetic.
Sabrina and I have been friends since we were eight years old. We never fought until she started acting like she was too cool to know me when I was thirteen and invited hundreds of people to her birthday party but not me. I guess a wiser teenager would cut contact then and there but I love her like a sister and like family often does, we forgive each other our sins. I just didn’t realise that since that day, she realised she could walk all over me and I’d still come begging like a dog.
Maybe I’m being melodramatic. But having a friend who so obviously doesn’t really want to be your friend no matter what they tell you really, really hurts. I feel like a girl stuck in a situationship where I have to pounce whenever the guy texts her for fear he will never hit her up again. I’m not Carrie Bradshaw and she’s not Mr Big, she’s not even Samantha! She’s just some girl who used to know me but doesn’t anymore.
I kind of wish we had a big blowout to end it all. If I got to tell her how much it hurts when she ignores me and fails to respond to me for months on end, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so ill when it says she’s left me on seen. Maybe it wouldn’t sting when she breaks her silence to show off pictures of her engagement ring and then fades into obscurity again. Maybe I wouldn’t hold out a secret hope that even though she never talks to me, she still remembers how we’ve always been there for each other and maybe she’ll honour our childhood pact to be each other’s maids of honour.
I know she loves me like a sister because she says she does and, for whatever reason, I want to believe her. But when friends stick around us long enough that they become part of the furniture, it’s easy to be taken for granted or to fade into nothing. It’s easy for one person to always be the chaser and the other to be the chasee. Resentment can build very quickly in that sort of environment and, when it becomes clear one of you doesn’t actually care even if they say they do, it’s kind of like finding out that the joke was on you all along.
As the evergreen lyricist of the modern era, Mitski puts it, in The Frost: “You’re my best friend, now I’ve no one to tell/ How I lost my best friend/ The frost, it looks like we’ve been left in the attic/ But you’re not here to see”. Time will pass on with or without Sabrina here to witness it, whether or not she brings me designer bags or fancy soaps like she’s a dad trying to butter up his kids post-divorce. It’s time I got real with myself and with her so I have muted her on everything and stuck her WhatsApp messages in the archived tab.
I finished the lip balm I got back in September. Guess I better learn to buy my own.
